


Day One

by thedandevil



Category: DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Character Study, Drug Use, Drug Withdrawal, Heroin, It's Hard and Nobody Understands, One Shot, References to Drugs, Rehabilitation, Sobriety, Starting Over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:14:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26143156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedandevil/pseuds/thedandevil
Summary: Getting clean at home wasn’t impossible, but it was hard, really hard.The peak of the withdrawal symptoms generally started one day after, lasting for two more in a horrible like plateau, before it finally started to recede. That was all he needed... to get through the next three days, and then a few. He’d been through hell and back as part of his job description, he could do this. He had to do this.It was already his first day since his last hit.
Kudos: 7





	Day One

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone! As part of a character study I wanted to write this piece on Roy's withdrawal but due to the nature of the piece I felt the need to add my own trigger warning regarding drug use. However, comments are very appreciated!  
> -DD

> **"Just a perfect day**  
>  **You made me forget myself**  
>  **I thought I was**  
>  **Someone else, someone good**

> **Oh, it's such a perfect day**  
>  **I'm glad I spent it with you**  
>  **Oh, such a perfect day**  
>  **You just keep me hanging on**  
>  **You just keep me hanging on"**

> _PERFECT DAY_
> 
> _LOU REEDS_
> 
> * * *

> Roy Harper had been used to warm weather all his life. Arizona was known for having hellish summers, the sun beating down mercilessly on the poor folks who decided to call that place their home. His freckled skin was _testament_ to this, and his time with the Outlaws hardly proved differently. The sun was kinder in the beach they called their home, an oasis and a refuge for the team. Here the humidity blended with the warmth. However n matter how much time he'd spent under the unyielding heat, yellow rays scotching his skin, Roy shivered, forgetting what genuine enveloping heat felt like. 

But his room felt anything but warm today. Perhaps it was, and it was merely his body receding into its own coldness.

The room barely resembled anything he was used to in fact, looking more like a room in a psychiatric ward than one anyone would actually want to live in. Since Roy decided to do this, he’d all but stripped the room from its contents. The walls lay blank like an unused canvas. Any sign of the archer having lived there for months was now gone. Normally it was filled with what most people dismissed as junk, and it very well might've been. Roy never owned anything of high value, he found no need in things like that. Monetary value, more specifically. There was a corner stockpiled with records he’d gathered throughout the years, each laid one on top of another neatly. Tom Waits, the Stones, Johnny Cash, and of course a record player Oliver gave him just a few months after he’d become his ward. The fact that it still worked after all these years was nothing short of a miracle. A few photographs of his life were gone today. The ones of him and his father standing in his ranger uniform just a few days before that fire. A box of the things he'd kept from his childhood home on the reservation of nothing other than sentimental value, an arrow from Brave Bow, the bracelet he'd taken before being forced away. A picture of Speedy and Green Arrow in his cave when he was still just a kid, his yellow hat in all its glory, another of the original Teen Titans. Roy leaning down to steal a kiss from Donna, the sidekicks wore nothing but grins at their first taste of independence. 

Everything now packed in a box, his life's worth of sporadic gleeful moments, sitting just on the outside of his room. It’d be returned to their original places when all this bullshit was over.

It wasn’t his first rodeo, and he wasn’t expecting just a week in solitude. Many people think this detox process just involves locking someone away from a needle. Just a few vacation days away from people, relaxing and taking it slow. Watching movies, staying hydrated, meditate, self fucking care. But it wasn’t his first time. Anyone’s who’s been through this process knew it was the opposite. It was nothing short of penance for using. Especially if you’re going clean somewhere that isn’t a clinic where if your symptoms get worse there’s a whole staff of people who can help you… or at least hold you down.

Getting clean at home wasn’t impossible, but it was hard, really hard. Roy had to be prepared and know what to get and what to keep away. One of G.A.'s lessons; always be prepared. Firstly nothing he could hurt himself or others with. The glass in the framed pictures now waiting outside, which he’d try to use against himself his second time around. Nothing he could break, more so for the mental state of the people outside his room, who’d have to hear him going ballistic. As if the crying and screaming weren’t enough, why break anything he could keep away?

So now, his room just lay bare, nearly nothing else other than his bed and a blanket in his bathroom. He dropped the few groceries he'd bought off before throwing out the bag. A few cardboard boxes of food he probably wouldn't eat, or even if he did they wouldn’t sit in his stomach for more than a few minutes. A few gallons of water he’d likely spill everywhere just trying to keep his mouth from drying, a jar of multivitamins that were said to help but didn’t, and lastly his saving grace; methadone. The only thing he really needed here.

With a deep and shaky breath Roy went into the room, any kind of liquid courage that the bourbon he’d downed a few minutes ago was gone. The anxiety was eating him from the inside out clawing from his chest to his throat, his feet refusing to move further in when he heard two locks close behind him at the door. Kory and Jason would come back in a few days. No way out now. His chin trembled and his eyes stung, already regretting the choice as he receded back to the door, leaning against it, trying to get his breathing back under control again.

Three counts in, five counts out, repeat ten times. He only managed to get through three of his exercises. Regret. God, he knew how hard this was, why the hell did he willingly do this again? In…out… in…

He pushed away from the door and walked to the bed, sitting on the edge of it, his elbows on his knees, feet tapping on the floor as if somehow that would speed up this process. As if filling himself with phony confidence would help him feel the bravery he'd never felt. As if he weren’t going to sit here for nearly a week as the poison flushed itself from his system. That poison that'd been in and out of his life since he was a teenager. 

It was already his first day since his last hit.

The peak of the withdrawal symptoms generally started one day after, lasting for two more, lasting for two more in a hell like plateau, before it finally started to recede. That was all he needed, to get through the next three days, and then a few. Then he'd be alright. Then he wouldn't miss it like he was beginning to now.

"Get a fucking grip, Harper. You've been through hell and back as part of his job description, you can do this." He had to do this. In…out… damn it. "Just stop thinking about it so much and try to relax. Just breathe"

But the more he reminded himself to think about anything else the more his mind kept going back to it. The magnetism, the hold his addiction had on him was undeniable. He shifted and laid on his bed, his fingernails digging into his forearms over his head, the sharpness a welcome distraction. But it only held his attention for a few minutes before his mind went back to it again. It always did. He now thought back to that first time he used.

The way he’d fallen asleep in the back of an alley in downtown. The same place he went to a few times, before taking a liking to rooftops shortly after he’d been mugged one night. He'd passed out on the garbage stained concrete, waking up to find his quiver missing as well as anything with half a dollar's worth gone. He’d be lying if he said the very thought of it didn’t appeal to him. That point in his life where he could do that and get away with it. Only having to come up with a half assed excuse to his mentor. When repercussions for his actions went unaccounted. Where he was free to fuck himself up as much as he wanted and still have a home to come back to. But more than anything, the attraction that fucking needle had in his mind. The feeling of just letting the weight and darkness cloud his mind so thickly that anything else was covered up and immediately pushed out of his mind.

She was his first love after all. The love he'd lacked as a child and chased every day since. Any kind of worry or anxiety you had completely disappears after you take it.. the anxiety you feel ripping in your lungs until you can barely breath is gone. The same one he had now. Everything slowly melts away. The first time he’d gotten high, it had been the most life changing moment he could've imagined. Advertisements that lured people away from drugs claimed they weren't all they were cracked up to be. Advertisements were right. In Roy's weak and lonely, they were better. After being shunned from his reservation, from his family, from his friends, he just wanted to forget those feelings, those memories that haunted him. But instead of simply letting go of it for a few moments like with any other kind of drug, it was as though his body and his mind diverged, part of him became one with the sky, floating up into the stars until everything was gone, his body stayed in that alleyway. His mind a total blank, a euphoria at finally having found complete peace and happiness. There wasn’t any reason not to be. Then he woke up.

See something people generally get wrong about heroin is that people take it to forget their unhappiness. No, that’s why you drink or snort anything in sight. If you’re willing to turn a spoon black with use, to tie your arm with a rubber band, and inject whatever half mixed crap some asshole sells you off the street?.. it’s because you want to remember what happiness feels like. And to be honest, Roy’d only known a few distinctive moments of it. Ironic for the one who’s always laughing and joking around. All he wanted was to remember, and relive them. To feel euphoria...even if it came from a bag.

He’d been searching that same enlightenment for years, but no matter how much he upped the dosage there was no way he could reach that fucking beautiful and sublime state of mind he had that first time. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try. And the more he tried to reach it, the more that happiness slipped from his fingers, receding further and further away. And the more he tried to just hold onto it the more distant it became, any fake happiness depended entirely on it. Without, he was lost. Roy he knew how many things the drugs ruined. It’d ruined his relationship with Oliver, with the Titans and probably caused a strain with the Outlaws to the day. The only difference was that he'd learnt to hide his habit better. There must’ve been countless more things he'd ruined. How the fuck could he remember them anyways? Most of them, he’d never patch up. So now, he starred at the ceiling, crescents from his fingernails a deep purple nearly breaking the skin.

The blinds from the window danced with shadows as the pale moonlight outside decided to play tricks on his mind. He grabbed the sheets and turned into the bed, finally letting himself sob into a pillow. His face was slick with tears and sweat that felt like ice. He regretted this. He regretted this so fucking much. That night was sleepless, time was gone and instead stood still. His heart felt like it would jump out of his body, the beating drummed in his ear as boiling blood scorched his veins, achingly finding its way through his body.

“Kori?! Jason please just open the door? I just need one more hit and then I’ll stop. Just.. let me feel good again. Then I promise I’ll stop. One more. Just please open the door” His voice begged, the strain obvious. It cracked as acid and anger filled him.

No answer but there were footsteps.. electric chills went across his entire body as he pulled off the sheets, like wet paper tearing from his skin, he kept dragged it off. The moment the covers were off he was shivering, yet the blood still felt like it was melting his skin.

“Kor-?” He took a weak step, another step closer to the door until he nearly collapsed on the door, his body was entirely too heavy as if suddenly gaining fifty pounds that dragged him down, or maybe he was just too weak to hold himself up anymore. Roy dragged himself until he could lean against the door, he could hear them fucking laughing on the other side of the door. Were they laughing.. were they even there? Was his mind once again playing into its own hallucinations?

“Open the goddamn door Jason. OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR YOU ASSHOLES. YOU’RE KILLING ME.” He let himself yell out, his frustration pouring out of his throat. He kept yelling until his throat was raw. Until he no longer remembered the words that left his mouth. All that pain and hatred aimed at himself. Roy’s every muscles felt like someone was tearing the fibers apart, his skin raw. He was exhausted from his pilgrimage from the bed back to the door. It took hours to fall asleep leaning against the wall for just five minutes and in those few minutes all he could dream about was that happiness again. His euphoria and his demons and his loss and his glory.

By the time he looked back to the dancing shadows on the ceiling, they were a golden yellow light. The first glimpses of morning light finding their way to his room. The fight through purgatory was far from over, but somehow he felt hopeful as he looked at the light. His breathing was stronger than yesterday. His tears dried on his face.

**Roy Harper was a hero, now it was about time he saved himself**

**After all, the first day was over.**


End file.
